


Ice

by Merrinpippy



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 18:51:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merrinpippy/pseuds/Merrinpippy
Summary: Of all the requests Darth Vader had expected his son to make, ice in his drink was not one of them. But he should not have been surprised. A lifetime ago, that had been one of his first requests too.





	Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Here's something short and sweet that doesn't want to be anything but. I just love the potential for Vader & Luke and needed to get a tiny bit of it out of my system. Plus, I've been needing to write _something._ It may as well be this.

“Could I have some ice?”

Of all the requests Darth Vader had expected his son to make, ice in his drink was not one of them. But he should not have been surprised. A lifetime ago, that had been one of his first requests too. 

Not to his captors while he was imprisoned, however. 

Vader will not deny him, and he gives the order to acquiesce. The attendant leaves them alone in the room. Luke offers him a smile, bright but with traces of weariness etched underneath his eyes.

“Have you slept?” Vader finds himself asking.

Luke laughs. “Better than I have on the run,” he says wryly. Vader does not visibly react to this; he had given Luke the best quarters on the Executor, and that was not barring his own. Of course he was sleeping well. “A few nights rest doesn’t erase years of insomnia, though. Sorry to disappoint.” 

_ You have never disappointed me,  _ Vader thinks. But he knows better than to say it aloud. Rejection from everyone he has ever known, he can take- but not from Luke. 

“Do you sleep?” Luke asks out of nowhere, looking genuinely curious. 

Vader blinks in surprise. Not that Luke can see. “In a sense,” he hedges, though it’s instantly clear that’s not good enough an answer. “My suit makes certain functions somewhat… uncomfortable. I have not slept of my own volition for some time. Unconsciousness, however, is another matter.” 

Luke tilts his head, processing. Almost concerned. It’s an odd sensation, to have someone else concerned for him. 

“And you’re happy like this?” Luke asks. 

Funny, how Luke is the one technically imprisoned and yet Vader feels like he is the one trapped and being interrogated all of a sudden. How can he ask that? And why does it make Vader colder inside? 

“So asks the insomniac,” Vader deflects with a hint of put-on humour. Luke is unflinching, though. Determined. So much like his younger self. 

“The insomniac surrounded by his friends, by people who love him. Who loves you?” 

Who indeed. 

Luke looks stricken by his own words- as if he is reacting in the space of Vader’s non-reaction to so little a slight. “Wait- I didn’t mean-” 

“It matters not,” Vader waves away. He doesn’t understand why Luke still looks perplexed. “I am a servant to the emperor. I do not require happiness, nor friends, nor love- nor sleep- to sustain me.”

It is not the right answer, Luke’s expression of sorrow tells him. Vader almost asks himself, since when is he trying to give the right answer to this boy, to please him as he pleases his master? But though Vader is a deceiver of many, he does not deceive himself. He knows. 

“Even so,” Luke begins,  _ “I-” _

The attendant returns with Luke’s glass of ice water, hands it to the boy, and then belatedly realises the tension in the room and scurries out, doing his best impression of a mouse droid. 

Vader thinks that Luke will continue his sentence, but after he takes a small tip of the water, he sighs, resigned. “And this. This is what you want for me? To be the emperor’s servant, like you?” 

He sees the look on Luke’s face, the tiredness, the sadness, the reluctant acceptance of an answer Vader hasn’t yet given. And he considers the way he hadn’t hesitated to bring Luke a privilege, however small, if only to make him happy. And he considers that Luke is a prisoner and yet has quarters larger and more ornate than everyone else on this ship, and he considers how the shadows under Luke’s eyes make Vader despair, and-

And he stops deceiving himself of one more thing. 

“No. I do not.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to leave a comment or find me on tumblr @merrinpippy :)


End file.
